Gravity

1Upon the black hole Cygnus X-1 that wobblesas if boffed by an invisible companion,upon a silk stocking the color of beesrolling itself up down a leg, upon the soft dipover the clavicles, which accept only tongued kisses,upon the tongue that slowly driftsinto the other’s mouth and chatsthere with her opposite number,gravity exerts the precise force needed.

2In the wings of the Eskimo curlewflapping through the thin air of the Andes,in the sacral vertebrae of the widowwho stoops at the window to peerbehind the drawn blind, in the saggy skinunder the eyes of the womanwho is in love with a man incapableof love, who lives on in the heavinessof emotional isolation, in the lavishcascade of urine the rhino releases,in the mouthwater of the child who waitsin shriek position for the dentist,in the scradged skin dangling in shredsfrom the children who lurched towardthe Nakashima River screaming, as if this werethe single aria they had ever rehearsed, gravityshudders at its mathematical immensity.

3As long as two kvetches remain alive,because inside each is self-hatred so hardenednot even nonexistence can abide them,as long as the hummingbird strikesthe air seventy-four times per second,as long as the mound of earth remains heapedbeside the rectangular hole waiting to be filled,gravity cannot be said to impose its will.

4If the pilot ejects one second too late,if the condemned man shrinks at seeingthe trapdoor give way, if the man who standswith fire at his back and a baby in his armshears the near neighbors cry,“Drop her! Don’t worry! We’ll catch her,”if the juggler gets behind in her countand the bright object flies past the spotwhere the other hand was to snatch it,gravity cannot pause to rectify matters.

5When a deer kenning us stands immobile,and for one moment we know we existentirely within her thoughts, when cichlid fry,sensing danger, empty their air bladdersand drop to the river bottom like pebbles,when the snow goes and millions of leavesreveal themselves pressed down over the contoursof earth to create her hibernation mask,when a person in a military cemeteryamong grave markers that spread to all the horizonsunderstands that all of existence has been destroyedagain and again, when depression after maniacauses clock hands to stick and days to crawl,when the full moon’s light creeps across a sleepercalling to her atavistic soul, when a soldier,who has always known life is imperfect,is wheeled to another hopeless attemptat surgery—but, this time, resolvesto sleep and not wake again until such timeas time begins again—then gravitygrips us to the earth, and crosses its fingers.

6In the case of the last ancient trees at Ypresstill turning out their terrified wood,in the case of the concertina wirehurled out in exuberant spirals and set downbetween rich and poor, in the case of the howlsthat fly off the earth through madhouse windows,in the case of the word “heavenly”when we remind ourselves that earth,too, was a heavenly body once,in the case of the numeral keystotting up the number of humanshumans have killed, in the case of the manwho strays into a gravitational field wherethe differential between the force on the scalpand the force on the foot sole will stretch himinto an alimentary canal thin as a thread,in the case of the child who has upsethis ink bottle while doing homeworkand quickly snaps both arms downto halt the lateral gush of the black juices,gravity, if it could, would recuse itself.